The "OMG I just finished!" Thread

[Kylie Abel]

LOVED the book. Although I had moments of "NOOOOO that person did NOT just die!!" (Egwene, Siuan, and Gareth put me in tears each time). It was still wonderful, full of action, laughs, tears, and lots of the unknowns were finally understood. The ending totally made me wish there were more books coming. What will Rand do? Will Cadsuane heal the White Tower as Egwene did? Will poor Min be stuck with the Seanchan forever?! Ahhh oh well...I suppose it had to end sometime. I will definitely be re-reading the series over and over in the coming years.

 

BIG thank you to Brandon, Harriet, and, of course, Robert Jordan.

[Reyoru]

:D

Edited January 17, 2013 by Reyoru

[Dbajdek]

It was an ending, but not the ending I expected. I was still wondering when the tinkers were going to join in and have a sing a long. Not to mention the DO prophecies not coming true. Or the fact I thought the fox med. didnt work against male channeling. Overall I am glad their was an ending, still a little shocked its finished.

Edited January 17, 2013 by Jak o'Shadows

[Dastion]

I think a lot of the 'arcade feel' has to do with the generic nature of the armies, there were always sooo many soldiers that even with hundreds dying from channelers every minute it just didn't impact the overall feel. I mean, the massive Seanchan army was only a quarter of their numbers.

 

The opposite of this can be seen in the White Tower's war front where they are seemingly working well together and beating back the shadow, only to be ambushed by the Sharans. In that part I definitely felt the devastating blow that the white tower took and was shocked at the sheer losses. But that's because Aes Sedai are a limited resource whereas generic soldiers aren't something a reader can empathize with.

 

Overall I enjoyed the book, I wished that more had been revealed about certain things but I think Brandon had enough 'points to hit' as it was, which probably lead to the checklist feel.

 

I did dislike the abandonment of various secondary/tertiary characters. Sulin is apparently just a nameless Aiel in this book, and Setalle Anan is dropped among Trolloc captives and promptly forgotten.

 

 

P.S. Bela should have been a hero of the horn. If kamakaze wolves can come back, so should she.

Edited January 17, 2013 by Dastion

[probe907]

I think a lot of the 'arcade feel' has to do with the generic nature of the armies, there were always sooo many soldiers that even with hundreds dying from channelers every minute it just didn't impact the overall feel.

 

I agree... And I think this happened because from the perspective of the reader, the nameless generic armies mean nothing. They are just cannon fodder. We only feel the impact of the battle when a named character/city falls. In that sense the Light's casualties felt almost trivial, because only Egwene and Caemlyn were major WoT entities. Moreover, only a few secondary entities, such as Gawyn, Siuan, and the Borderlands, were destroyed. So from our perspective, the Shadow lost everything in the Last Battle, while the Light lost 10% of its forces, tops. The whole thing always felt like a cakewalk rather than like a desperate last stand against overwhelming forces.

Perhaps this is for the best, because an indiscriminate slaughter of the good guys would have also jarred with the general WoT framework. In the WoT, good guys live forever... With a few exceptions.

[mrtumnas]

Noooooo!! NOT Bela!!! It's like losing Hedwig all over again :(

 

 I loved the book, I loved the ending. I have a few complaints and I'll get those out of the way quickly.

 

 1. Everything up to the Dragon's Peace (besides the Prologue which was amazing as always), felt extremely rushed, and...I dunno...fanfic-ish. Chapter 1 was horrible, It felt like Brandon was just trying to get things out of the way.

 2. Mat/Rand reunion...Seriously??? Did you just turn this into a Peter Jackson-esque Legolas and Gimli competition? I literally hid my face in my hands.

 3. Brandon still just can't write Mat. Towers of Midnight was an improvement, but in tGS and this book, he comes off like a buffon mostly.

 4. Nakomi? Not even a hint, guys?

 5. I would have liked to see Gawyn actually kill Demandred. I thought that would have been a great ending for him, and the blood knives are cool. Lan already contributed enough, him killing Demandred just didn't do anything for me..it was like "Oh look, there goes Lan being bad a again. Whatevs."

 

The good:

 

 Sharans!! Demandred being in Shara was my favorite theory, and I'm glad it was proved right. Their burst onto the scene was nothing short of heart stopping. I loved the  Black Tower arc.

 

 Androl/Pevara was really sweet. Pevara was always one of my favorite Aes Sedai, I like that she found a special someone.

 

 Cadsuane as Amyrlin? I literally laughed out loud, that was perfect.

 

 Lielwin as Egwene's warder?? Even more Lolz.

 

 Logain...poor Logain. I've always felt a strong attraction to his character, since the days when he was paraded through Camlyn, laughing. I felt for all the Ashaman, really. The fear these men lived with, the hatred they put up with, it makes Logain and co the most sympathetic anti-heroes I've read about. There were three times in this book that I felt tears in my eyes, the most powerful was when the mother who's son Logain rescues pledges to send her son to the Black Tower someday.

 

 Olver...I was always curious about what his role would be. It was perfect. That was one of the other two times I felt tears.

 

 Egwene was hands down my favorite character in this series, but I wasn't bothered by her death. She was the Amyrlin who unified and led the White Tower through the Last Battle...I don't think she had any more to offer the world. It was a fitting end.

 

 But the thing that really made me put the book down and stare blankly at the wall was near the end of the last chapter: "He understood, finally,that the Dark One was not the enemy. It never had been." The WHOLE series suddenly made so much more sense. It's not an epic struggle between the forces of creation and destruction, it's a human struggle. It's a story of good people vs bad people, the selfless vs the selfish, the champions of the light vs the Forsaken. The DO wasn't a He, it was an It, something exsisting on it's own for a reason. Its a subtle difference, but one I never would have guessed, and one that cast everything in the past 14 books in a different light. I had theories with Rand destroying the DO, or just locking him back up, but never in my wildest imaginations did I think he would be given a chance to destroy the DO, yet turn it down. It was a beautiful twist, and very satisfying to me. I don't think any other ending would have worked for me, without a little disappointment.

 

 You know what I also like? That the epilogue was short. I didn't need a detailed explanation of future events. I know these characters so well that I have a pretty good idea how things will turn out in the long run. I was expecting a large portion of this book to deal with the aftermath of the Last Battle, but it's more fun this way

 

 But at the end of the day, Bela's death was nothing more than meaningless slaughter. WTF, people.

 

 I'm going to really miss these characters.

[mrtumnas]

Can't wait for the next Stormlight Archive to come out now! :D

Edited January 18, 2013 by mrtumnas

[GiovanniGinoCaffarella]

after my first reading i admit to having been underwhelmed.  However i think that was mostly becuase I was just plowing through the book to see what happened.  Once I settled down and did a slower second read I saw all the little flourishes that I had missed on that first "just tell me what freaking happens to Rand' read.  Much better the second time.

Wait, um how fast can you read?!?

[Ruth]

 

I think a lot of the 'arcade feel' has to do with the generic nature of the armies, there were always sooo many soldiers that even with hundreds dying from channelers every minute it just didn't impact the overall feel.

 

I agree... And I think this happened because from the perspective of the reader, the nameless generic armies mean nothing. They are just cannon fodder. We only feel the impact of the battle when a named character/city falls. In that sense the Light's casualties felt almost trivial, because only Egwene and Caemlyn were major WoT entities. Moreover, only a few secondary entities, such as Gawyn, Siuan, and the Borderlands, were destroyed. So from our perspective, the Shadow lost everything in the Last Battle, while the Light lost 10% of its forces, tops. The whole thing always felt like a cakewalk rather than like a desperate last stand against overwhelming forces.

Perhaps this is for the best, because an indiscriminate slaughter of the good guys would have also jarred with the general WoT framework. In the WoT, good guys live forever... With a few exceptions.

 

I thought this ending was brilliant. I made me laugh, cry and think differently about the pattern than I had before. I like the ending.

 

It bothered me a lot that tens of thousands of nameless generic armies were slautered with little to no recognition of sadness of this tragic loss of life. Yes, it is easier to feel for the characters we know but not so easy to have compassion for the mercenary soldiers, the shopkeepers, the farmers, the mothers, the children who gave their lives and who will be sorely missed by their loved ones.and by everyone who depended on their skills. With hundreds of thousands killed it will be several centuries before life return to any kind of normalcy. I kept thinking of what happened in a ASOIF where the land and peoples are decimated and starving because of the political wars. Certainly, the survivors in WOT have a lot more to look forward to with the nations treaty for peace and the DO out of service for awhile.

[Kudlak]

I am satisfied. Just finished a first read through, a bit quickly, I guess but It's the literary equivalent of wolfing down your food too quick. 

 

If I had to single out one aspect of the book that really struck me, or stood out to me it would have to be the casual manners in which a number of the main characters deaths were handled. To be brief: I loved that. It really helped hit home what I feel is the truth about war. No soldier, no matter how great or heroic, gets the valiant last stand, coveted in glory & drawn out before ending in an epic fall to the ground screaming defiance. The truth is that most men just take a shot to the neck or a blow to the gut, crumple, have maybe a split second of horror/shock & they fall in the mud. Dead.

 

It's going to sound strange but even though in my mind I knew 22 years we've been building up to The Last Battle and yet the deaths still caught me by surprise although a part of me was thinking, you're surprised that people are dying in an apocalypse? It would be like jumping into a pool then screaming 'Oh god, I'm wet!'. If I had to be even more specific & pick the moment that have so far affected me most, it's currently the death of Gawyn & the events surrounding & coming as a direct result of his death. For me that was a very powerful set of events. I still don't know how to feel about Gawyn. I feel like his character developed in so many admirable ways & yet remained stubbornly idiotic in the ways the count and for all that I think in his passing I've finally grown to love his character. Of all the characters, his death was surely the most meaningless. It was set in stone the moment he put on those rings and what I am still chuckling over is the fact that I still feel that was not ever necessary. Oh it was necessary to make a great story but from a decision making pov I am laughing at that dumb sob. In the way that you laugh at a dumb kid you just can't help but adore. My favourite part was the way he never even thought to simply tell Ewgene & see if there was anybody who could have healed him. Oh Gawyn.

 

I think an aspect of his death I absolutely loved was that even with his ter'angreal, Sanderson/RJ wanted to really drum home just how utterly outclassed Gawyn was by Demandred. It helped me put a perspective at the super human kind of level those guys from the Age of Legends were at. I was, however, baffled by the fact that Galad without a blurring shape still managed to put up, apparently, a better fight that Gawyn. I have no issue with them both falling, I felt it was the only appropriate outcome. My issue, a trifling one, was with character development & consistency. I felt that Gawyn's whole identity was tied into how he as grown both as a person by learning forgiveness & as a swordsman by slowly but surely stepping out of Gawyn's shadow to establish himself as maybe the 2nd best swordsman in the land. That he simply died without dignity or putting any real strain on Demandred was a plus to me, again helping to really drum home the kind of superiority they were dealing with. I just found it odd that after putting in so much effort to see Gawyn develop his identity as the Premier swordsman, especially considering he was a man with nothing to lose, to then end up putting on a 2nd class show compared to Galad? I didn't get that one, i liked it, it just felt inconsistent.

 

Gawyn's death & it's directly related happenings was, for me, the most powerful moment in the book. It just felt so personal & intimate & had such great bearing mostly because it got me emotionally involved with such a stupid son of a goat. Everything he did could have been avoided right up to & including his death. I didn't mind, I found it privately hilarious, it highlighted what has intrigued me most about his character. His development. I feel that no character in the books grows so much as a person & yet learns so little at the same time. His decision making flickered between baffling & mind numbingly asinine. He managed to forgive Rand, learn to love Ewgene without implying he felt she was inferior & needed protection, those were huge steps. At the same time he felt that his best option to scout a path & free him & his lover was to activate a suicidal ring? I'll admit that was one choice he may have been forced into but to not tell Ewgene or anybody about it? In an age where miracle seems to happen on the daily & twice on Tuesdays? There was surely a cure waiting just around a corner. However even if we forgive him all these terrible decisions I refuse to forgive him for wandering off during the the apocalypse to fight a man who is two steps away from being Satan's boss. There was simply no way he was ever even going to come close to winning & a blind monkey with Aspergers could've see that. That wasn't even the worst part, though. What's rule numero uno of being a body guard of any kind? Never leave your principle. I know diddly squat about security/warfare but even I know that. It's dumb, reckless & worst of all in his case, selfish. He felt that it was noble but no wife/husband, who genuinely loved their partner, has ever thought that their spouse going off to die was in their best interest.

 

All these decisions, I find it hard to believe a man who has grown up with a palace education & has lead men in battle could willingly make these. His character was just too unbelievably stupid. I think this is why I've sort of grown fond of him. I guess in hindsight he's become a sort of de facto favourite character. So much education & so much growth & so, so unfathomably selfish & stupid yet I love him because the whole time he thought he was doing what was best for Ewgene & everybody. As I wrap this up I really should mention Ewgene's death. Bizzare how despite knowing this was the Last Battle in both name & nature, I just kept getting surprised by who kept dying. Everybody else saw it coming but I just didn't expect her to die the way she did. i guess nobody expects a loved one to die & turn into a giant white pole. It just sort of snuck up on me. The way it was suddenly mentioned that she had draw too much of the power. It wasn't like other deaths where 'suddenly an arrows sprouted through his chest, his eyes galzed over' those deaths you know instantly & you can process the shock. This, for me, was more subtle. She was drawing in way more than she could handle, my first thought was oh this is building to something. Then I realised oh she'd *already* drawn in too much and my second reaction was, oh god she's burned herself out, how will she continue as Amyrilin, then finally as the paragraph had her keep drawing in energy, more & more & then the penny finally dropped along with my jaw. It took me three whole seperate thought process to wrap my mind around the fact that in that one sentence, one action of drawing in power, she was already dead  I just didn't know it yet. That was very moving for me.

 

Call me a hopeless romantic but I always thought/hoped/wanted Ewgene/ & Gawyn to make it. So that really hit home for me. Funnily enough I have loved Mierin right throughout the series & I also got very emotional that she was given such a beautiful, poetic ending. I am a living testament to how stupid men can be over women. Even with all the ample evidence of her character, to see her helping in the last book I still believed she wasn't truly evil right up until she tried to kill Rand at the very end. I'm a right sucker because in my heart if I was there I would still try to 'save' her. I maintain she wasn't like the other chosen. That tremor in her voice, she was the only one to show that somewhere buried deep she did, if not love, then believe in the union betwixt her & Lews Therin. I'm glad, though. She never lost her edge. Anything less than a fierce, vengeful, wrath driven fury would have just not suited her. I just always felt she was the most sane, least petty of all the forsaken & she was a villain with style that you could truly love. The others were just brutal savages but she always brought a smile out of me. A true villain. The kind you love to hate & strive to defeat but when they die you're filled with a sense of loss & regret that you just can't quite fill or ever shake off. She got under my skin & I will forever love her for that.

 

Thanks RJ. Thanks Sanderson.

Thx man, this is excatly what I think about this storyline. Very poor and unlogic :/ Gawyn didnt know, that rings are killing him resp. BS IGNORE his own warning about them !!!

[Randommer]

Whew just finished! That took longer than I thought, but I wanted to read it properly. I don't quite know how I feel right now...

[Ace Sedai]

Slightly dissapointed but at least it has an ending.

RIP R.J,I wish you were here to end this.

I can't believe how long I've been reading WOT.

 

[Adam Masterman]

Just finished, two parts I really liked (that I haven't seen mentioned yet, though I only red about half the thread):

 

1.  Perrin's "Its just a weave" comment resonating with Egwene, and eventually becoming the Flame of Tar Valon, a new weave that counters balefire and fortifies the pattern itself.  Awesome!

 

2.  Androl opens a gateway to the center of dragonmount, annihilating a trolloc army with pressurized magma.  

 

Working on some fanart already.  :)

[JaSa]

First of all I want to thank Harriet and Brandon finishining the story. I really appreciate it even though there is things in Brandon's work I don't like at all. I do understand that no one would not have been able to replace and finish the story way Jordan did. Brandon did pretty well he signed up to write one book which changed to three books and he did what he promised so I respect him for that. I remember time when it was uncertain whether it would ever be finished and I'm really grateful that Jordan let his work to be finished by others. May he rest in peace. The wind may be gone, but memory will live.

 

I got book almost full week after release and work disturbed my "reading time"  so I only finished it now less than two hours ago. I'm pretty wordless. I just can't think of one word to describe the last book - or the series as whole. No word is fitting, because I have really mixed feelings about it. On other hand I may not even want to find one.

 

Last book had big focus on strategical aspect I loved it - still reading so long about battles without break was little tedious, but at same time it was pretty amazing. It was hard to see deaths of characters I liked and some that I even disliked at some point. One thing that was really great in the series that I just now started to love was nature of the world Jordan created. Characters would be reborn they would get another chance someday knowing that made it easier to see them go. World I grew to love would change with technology, but one day age and world we got small peek into would return. Though it makes me wonder how much change the wheel will allow for pattern and our characters next time will they get more happiness and will survivors of last battle change? I guess we will never know so it is little sad that they will be forced to fight the last battle again and again, but still I prefer wheel with no end to the end.

 

Ending, it was fitting. Not quite what I expected, not quite what I wanted, but still it fits. I would have loved to read more about what happened after, but it was decent place, time and way to end the series... what happened after would have been another story.. One we won't sadly ever get to hear. Book felt too short there was alot of things that felt like I did not get enough closure. There was even some closure I did not want to get particularly one answer to one question. Some scenes suprised me with their epicness others dissapointed me. Some things felt just little too convenient and some little too "epic". Last battle lasted for one whole book, but still the end felt sudden. It was hard to say goodbye to the world and characters even though I will probably reread series many times in my life knowing the ending and fate of characters may have kind of new negative effect on that. I could go on and on about my thoughts about the series as whole or last book alone, but it would take more time than I have. I'm close enough to satisfied.

 

Anyways thanks RJ. Good work BS.

Edited January 18, 2013 by JaSa

[rbtwinky]

Did we really need that much battle?  Oy!  More time with characters, less time with tactics, please.

 

Also...  feeling really ambivalent about the ending.  Both the ending of Rand's fight with the DO and Rand riding off in anonymity.  We knew Rand wasn't going to kill the DO when he created his DO-free version of reality, roughly 200 pages ago.  So that ending was a bit anti-climactic.  The final scene was what we were building up to all along?  Seemed rather... common.  Dude saves the world and goes off to live a normal life.  How creative.

 

Although, I did cry twice.  Once for Rand and Tam when I thought Rand was dead.  And once for this awesome series when the wind picked up at the end.  I can count the books that have made me cry on one hand.  It's in fine company in that regard.

Edited January 18, 2013 by rbtwinky

[Bao_The_Wyld]

Omg, i just finished... did not see much of that coming. Will have to contemplate a while...

[naposim]

Very disappointed. I'm sure Sanderson did his best (and his own books might be good, I don't know), but reading the last few books by him has been like reading shoddy fan fiction. The charachters are not themselves anymore, every other sentence feels wrong. This book is all over the place. It just feels unfinished and the dialogue is awful.

 

And the ending, I wanted something more.  More details of what happened afterwards  (right after and in the future). I have been following the series since 97, so I'm very frustrated that RJ couldn't finish his work.

 

RJ created an amazing world and this series deserved a better ending. 

Edited January 19, 2013 by naposim

[Arran]

I loved this book.

 

I think we can all say right now that Lan is the most badass character from any book/film/game ever? :P

 

 

Very disappointed. I'm sure Sanderson did his best (and his own books might be good, I don't know), but reading the last few books by him has been like reading shoddy fan fiction. The charachters are not themselves anymore, every other sentence feels wrong. This book is all over the place. It just feels unfinished and the dialogue is awful.

 

And the ending, I wanted something more.  More details of what happened afterwards  (right after and in the future). I have been following the series since 97, so I'm very frustrated that RJ couldn't finish his work.

 

RJ created an amazing world and this series deserved a better ending. 

 

But the thing is... The ending IS RJ's work!

[Terez]

To an extent, yes. I tend to think that the implications of the future would have been stronger and more interesting if RJ had actually managed to finish it. Delivery is not something you can summarize. Even the scenes he actually wrote were in draft form, and those that were dictated needed even more modification. I think we got the bare bones of RJ's story, and a little more. I'm thankful to Brandon for bringing it to us, but it's difficult to judge RJ on a story that is inevitably quite different from what he imagined.

[Suttree]

To an extent, yes. I tend to think that the implications of the future would have been stronger and more interesting if RJ had actually managed to finish it. Delivery is not something you can summarize. Even the scenes he actually wrote were in draft form, and those that were dictated needed even more modification. I think we got the bare bones of RJ's story, and a little more. I'm thankful to Brandon for bringing it to us, but it's difficult to judge RJ on a story that is inevitably quite different from what he imagined.

Not only that but we do know Brandon tweaked and added things(Cadsuane) as well.

[naposim]

I'm convinced RJ would have included a longer epilogue and tied things up much better. No final scene with Mat, Rand and Perrin. What happens with Rand, Min, Aviendha and Elayne? Same thing with the other characters. I can't feel at rest with this ending. Maybe that's just me. I can't accept that this is how RJ really intended to end the series (with no proper epilogue).

Edited January 19, 2013 by naposim

[Terez]

Well, the going impression is that the last scene with Rand was intended by RJ to actually be the last scene in the book. But what's interesting is that when Brandon was actually working on the book, he implied that the epilogue material was intended to be 'after the last scene'. I'm not sure if this was a misunderstanding on his part (which was cleared up by Harriet) or whether they decided to make that the last scene just because RJ always said it would be the last scene, and they didn't want to get into a semantics battle with the fans. And no telling whether RJ would have been quite so short with the epilogue stuff if he'd finished it.

 

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=46#38

 

Austin Moore (23 September 2011)

You recently said you were just over 60% finished with A Memory of Light; how much % will RJ's ending take up when you put it in?

Brandon Sanderson (23 September 2011)

I'm guessing about 10%.

Austin Moore

Is it gonna get slid right in or are you going to adjust it some to fit into how you're leading up to it?

Brandon Sanderson

The ending scene will work fine, no changes. I've targeted things that way, as I didn't want the ending scene to change.

Brandon Sanderson

However, he left a TON of 'after the end scene' type stuff that is probably epilogue material. That I'll need to modify.

Edited January 19, 2013 by Terez

[naposim]

Like I said, maybe it's just me. I simply can't find peace of mind without a proper epilogue. I guess that is what happens when you get too emotionally attached to the series.

[Terez]

Well, RJ always did say that he hated stories that wrapped everything up neatly at the end. I realize most readers aren't familiar with the things he said in interviews and on book tours, but he said that stories like that made it seem as though the world and the characters might as well be on the shelf under a bell jar collecting dust. He didn't want to read the story again, because the characters were no longer living, their lives having been summed up too neatly. It was one of his most repeated lines over the years, and he always talked about how the last scene would have a hook in it, to make readers think there would be a sequel (and for most of those years, he said definitively that there wouldn't be; it wasn't until he got ill that he started talking about outriggers).

[naposim]

 

Well, RJ always did say that he hated stories that wrapped everything up neatly at the end. I realize most readers aren't familiar with the things he said in interviews and on book tours, but he said that stories like that made it seem as though the world and the characters might as well be on the shelf under a bell jar collecting dust. He didn't want to read the story again, because the characters were no longer living, their lives having been summed up too neatly. It was one of his most repeated lines over the years, and he always talked about how the last scene would have a hook in it, to make readers think there would be a sequel (and for most of those years, he said definitively that there wouldn't be; it wasn't until he got ill that he started talking about outriggers).

I can understand that. I just wish we got one final scene with Mat, Perrin and Rand. Something more involving the other main charchters too and just a glimpse into the future. Anyways, this is the end and you simply have to accept that.